


Concessions Made *and* Concessions Broken *and* The Reckoning

by deslea



Category: The X files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Incest, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-08
Updated: 2003-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:10:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Concessions Made:</b> "In times of war, concessions must be made." It's December 1982, and Samantha comes home from her latest abduction to a grieving lover, a frightened brother, and a stepmother who doesn't know what to do.<br/><b>Concessions Broken:</b>  It's 1987, and Jeffrey and Samantha face up to their past, and to a future in doubt.<br/><b>The Reckoning:</b> Why did Cassandra make the choice she did? Why did she let it go on? The answer is darker than the question. Cassandra backstory to Concessions.<br/><b>Content advisory:</b> Incest between consenting adult siblings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concessions Made *and* Concessions Broken *and* The Reckoning

  


**Concessions Made**

Light. 

She feels it pressing insistently against her eyelids, but it is not the fierce light to which she is accustomed. This light is gentle. Like sunlight, but blessedly cool and kind. 

Moonlight, she realises. It's moonlight. 

Her eyelids flutter open. She blinks - once, twice, a third time. From her vantagepoint, the moonlight is above her, at an angle. She seeks to orientate herself before she moves. 

From the source of the light, she allows her gaze to slide in, through the window, over the peeling paintwork of the ceiling. It settles on a light fixture, and she releases the breath that has been held tight in her throat. She knows that fixture. It's a ridiculous, pretentious thing. Who the hell puts a chandelier in a dumpy weatherboard house? She and Jeffrey used to laugh about it, in between taking pot shots at it with his BB gun. Boy, was Cassandra pissed when they knocked it out. She hated that chandelier even more than they did, but she made them fix it anyway. Tough love. 

She's home. In the den. 

As if to confirm that, she turns her head a little, looking for comforting landmarks. The television is where it has always been. So is Cassandra's armchair. Pictures of herself and of Jeffrey adorn the side table. So they still live here, and so does she. All right. 

She lifts her hands and smooths them down over her body. She recognises the silky fabric beneath her hands. It's the soft slip she had taken to wearing to bed not long before - 

well, before she was taken. 

Jeffrey liked it, she remembers. It was chaste and discreet, but it was delicate and pretty, and when he ran his trembling, guilt-soaked hands over her body, the fabric slipped easily with him. He was a creature of touch, Jeffrey. It was only in touch that he ever seemed to let go of the terrible strain and the painful, painful restraint that seemed to define the very lines of him. It was only in touch that- 

Oh, shit, she's crying. 

She swallows the hitching sobs that rise in her throat, laughing shakily through her tears. You'd think she'd have learned. You'd think she'd have known the comfort they'd found couldn't last. 

Nothing ever does. 

She sits up, and allows the world to shift and righten before attempting to rise. She gets to her feet, and feels to her relief that her legs are steady beneath her. 

She walks to the kitchen. 

She hopes that the newspaper is still there. It all depends on whether Cassandra is home. If Cassandra is home, there will be newspapers. If not, Jeffrey will have thrown them out as soon as they're read. That's how Cassandra raised him - to stick to routine. That's how her absences went unnoticed. That's how she managed to keep custody of her only child even when she wasn't there. Jeffrey never skipped school, never skipped baths, never skipped meals. He stuck to the routine. 

There is a newspaper, and she makes a sound of relief. It sits in a companionable mess alongside a plate. Crumbs on the plate. Dregs of juice in a waterglass. The vestiges of disorder comfort her. She works very hard not to remember what they do to her when she's - 

well, when she's gone. 

But she remembers the sterility. The disorder of home pleases her. Cassandra's disorder pleases her. 

She picks up the newspaper, turns it over. Reads the date. 

Oh, my God. 

That long? It was that long? 

The shock hits her, and she pulls out a chair and sinks into it. With trembling hands, she turns the pages. A new Russian leader. The late - oh, my God, Princess Grace of Monaco? When? How? She wonders how she can find that out. Jeffrey wouldn't like it if she asked him. Maybe Cassandra. Assuming Cassandra wasn't gone at the time too. 

"Samantha?" 

She looks up from the newspaper to the figure in the doorway. He's thinner than she remembers. His bare chest is highlighted by the moonlight, pasty-white with too many hollows. His striped pyjama pants are loose and low around his hips. When she left they sat snugly at his waist. 

"Hi, Jeffrey." 

He stares at her, eyes bright, Adam's apple working visibly. She feels tears rising in her throat. Oh, Jeffrey. 

All at once, the palpable agony in his expression subsides. It falls out of his face in a rush. Like dropping a mask - or putting one on. He is expressionless for a long moment, and then his face turns pink and flush with anger. "Hi Jeffrey? You leave for six fucking months without a word and all you can say is hi-Jeffrey?" 

She closes her eyes and bears his assault. It isn't fair, but it's how he survives. How he maintains his denial in the face of the evidence of a mother and a sister who always leave him. A lover, too, now. She doesn't argue with him any more. She just lets it wash over her. It will pass. It always does. 

When she hears his footsteps thud gracelessly past her, she opens her eyes once more. She turns a little, watching as he gets a glass tumbler and fills it with water from the tap - undoubtedly his original purpose in coming down here. 

He stands there in front of the sink, his back to her, staring out the window into their barren little backyard. The lines of his back are harsh, drawn out and held taut by nineteen years of trauma and their associated mental gymnastics. Twenty years, now, she realises - and she's just a few weeks off nineteen. Again the words rise in her mind - that long? 

She goes to him. 

She stands behind him, running her hands over his shoulders, pressing herself against his back. Needing his warmth. 

She shouldn't do it. Six months is a long time. A lot can change. Maybe there's someone else. The thought saddens her, as much as she knows she should be glad. 

But she doesn't really believe that. No one understands what he goes through. No one ever could. No one but her. 

And she needs him. 

"Don't," he says. But he's trembling beneath her palms, and she understands that he doesn't really want her to stop. He just wants to be able to live with himself in the morning. He wants to make it her fault. That's okay. It isn't fair, but she'll bear that, too. 

She steps back a little, but leaves her hands on his shoulders. Gives him the chance to walk away. Just in case she's wrong. Just in case he really does mean it after all. But he turns to face her instead. 

"Samantha," he whispers. Tender fingers find her hair, stroking it back off her face. His eyes gleam with tears. "I thought they killed you this time." 

Grief washes over her, fast and fierce. Grief, and an odd kind of gratitude. 

He believes her. Underneath it all, he believes her. 

"Jeffrey," she whispers, but then his mouth is on her, tender and urgent. She kisses him too, not sure whether the tears in her mouth are his or hers. "Oh, Jeffrey." 

"Thank God," he sighs as his palms ease down over her flesh. "Thank God you're home." 

"I was so scared," she tells him when she finds him, hard and insistent with her hands. 

"I thought I lost you," he says while gentle fingers prepare her. 

"I've been-" 

"-so alone," they whisper when they join. 

His tears spill on her cheeks when he empties himself within her. 

 

~x~ 

 

She wakes entwined in his arms. 

The sun is high in the sky, and they're in his bed. It's the double bed he bought from his gas station earnings just before she left. "I like the extra space," he'd said in answer to his mother's questioning eyebrow. Cassandra had looked a little puzzled, but she accepted the purchase without comment. 

She loves that bed. It makes her feel more...legitimate, somehow. It's a bed for grown-ups. Not like their chaste little childhood bunks. And it's the bed he bought for her. 

She is aware of movement - of Cassandra's door; of the humming, rhythmic sound of her wheelchair down the hall. The bathroom door opens and closes. After a long pause, she hears the shower begin to run. Five minutes, she estimates, maybe ten. That's how much longer she has before she must extricate herself from Jeffrey's arms and go to her own bed for the first time in six months. Yet again, the words rise in her mind - that long? She suddenly feels very weary. She closes her eyes. 

She wakes with a start to the sound of Cassandra's voice. "Jeffrey, can you drive me to-" 

The first thing she sees is Jeffrey. He's blinking, a look of horror on his sleep-befuddled face. She turns, following his gaze to Cassandra in her chair in the doorway. Her mouth is formed into an O. 

Jeffrey scrambles to sit up, pulling the coverlet to cover himself. "Mom-" 

"Samantha?" Cassandra demands, unbelieving. She wonders what Cassandra can't believe - that she's alive, that she's back, or that she's in her brother's bed. 

Well, okay, that's an easy one. Jeffrey's bed, hands down. 

They all stare at each other for a long moment, and then Cassandra reverses out of the doorway and leaves them without a word. 

Jeffrey's voice is frantic. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." 

She finds her voice. "Jeffrey, don't. Let me talk to her." 

"Talk to her? You must be nuts! We have to go, we have to leave-" and then his voice dies away. 

Cassandra needs them. Leaving her is not an option. Not for this. Not for anything. She knows this, and looking at him, she knows he knows it too. 

"It has to be handled," she says. "One way or another, it has to be handled." 

"I can't," he says. "Would you-" 

He breaks off. A look of shame passes over his features. He shakes his head and rises. He begins to dress. "Stay here." 

Somewhere along the line, she thinks, Jeffrey will have to take responsibility for their relationship. It strikes her as wryly funny that he would decide to do it now - now, when it really should be her. 

She is the interloper in this household. She is the one who had no right to be here, and who was embraced anyway. She is the one who owes amends. 

She gets to her feet and pulls on her slip. "No, Jeffrey. Trust me. It needs to come from me." 

"She's *my* mother," he protests. 

She doesn't point out that Cassandra is practically her mother too. "That's exactly why it shouldn't be you. She's going to ask questions, Jeffrey. When. How. How long. Whether we use birth control." 

He pales a little. She sees in his face all the things he would have to say, all the words he would have to use. She sees the paralysing discomfort rise in his features, and she knows he will let her do what has to be done. 

The battle takes longer than she thought it would. Jeffrey has grown a lot in her absence, she realises, watching his expression vacillate between determination and worry. But at last, he falters, and slumps down on the bed, his head in his hands. 

"Oh, God," he says. She thinks he might be crying. 

"I'll take care of it," she says. She drops a kiss on his head and leaves the room. 

 

~x~ 

 

She pauses in the hallway. 

She stands there, looking from her bedroom door to the kitchen. She balances two equally horrifying images: going out there in her slip - Cassandra must surely realise now that she wears it for Jeffrey - and Jeffrey deciding to go out there and talk to Cassandra after all. After a moment's indecision, she goes to her bedroom and dresses as quickly as she can. 

She finds Cassandra on the verandah. She's sitting on the stoop, her wheelchair a couple of feet away. She's smoking. Her elbows are perched on her useless knees. 

Her heart is pounding. 

"Cass?" she says softly. Her voice is trembling. 

Cassandra is silent for a long moment. Her shoulders are stiff. For a terrifying instant, Samantha fears she will tell her to go. Go, and never come back. 

She doesn't look at her, but her voice is gentle. A little raw, maybe. "Come and sit with me, dear." 

She takes no comfort in the endearment. That could well be automatic. But she does as she's told. 

The questions come, just as she told Jeffrey they would. 

"It was after you came back the last time - wasn't it? While I was still gone?" 

She nods. 

"I sensed things. Changes. I didn't want to think it. I didn't want to believe it." 

She nods again. She doesn't know what to say. 

"Do you - are you - in love?" Cassandra wonders, with a quizzical look, as though she can't quite comprehend what she knows intellectually to be possible. 

"It's all mixed up together," she says. "I love him as my brother. And I love him as-" my lover, she thinks, but doesn't say it. "You know," she finishes, lamely. 

"Yeah." Cassandra taps the ash off the end of her cigarette and brings it to her mouth once more. "Are you taking precautions?" 

"Yes," she says. "I'm on the Pill." That won't cover them for last night, but she'll see her doctor today or tomorrow. There are ways. She doesn't worry Cassandra with that. "I'm not bringing a baby into this, Cass. Not his, not anyone's. I wouldn't do that." 

"Good," she says. They fall quiet for a time, but then, hesitantly, she asks, "Are you going to stop?" 

Samantha closes her eyes. Somehow this question mortifies her, and she doesn't quite know why. "I don't know. I don't think so. He's afraid of what you might think of him. We both are. But-" 

"But this is what you want." 

She bows her head. Put like that, it sounds so selfish. 

"I don't know what to tell you," she says at last. "How to make you understand. There were times when I felt like I would die. Like there was only so much pain a person could endure, and live. And I was right at the limit." Cassandra is staring at her, frowning. Like she's seen something she's never seen before. "And now-" 

"Now, you can go on," Cassandra finishes for her in a very different voice. It isn't a voice she's heard before. 

Samantha nods. Her mouth feels unnaturally dry. 

"You're not the first person to love unwisely, Samantha," Cassandra says after a moment. "I kept on loving your father in the face of unspeakable things for much the same reasons." 

"Jeffrey isn't like him, Cass." 

"No. But the principle is still the same." 

"What principle?" 

She waits to be told that it can only end in disaster and pain. That evil thrives on evil even in the company of good. That some lines should never be crossed. Something like that. But Cassandra surprises her. 

"In times of war, concessions must be made." 

She looks at her, uncomprehending. At last, she forces out, "I don't understand." 

Cassandra pitches her cigarette out onto the lawn. "Sometimes, Samantha, we do things to survive. Things we would never normally do. I've seen people do terrible things. Murder. Torture. I've seen them use their bodies for barter. Awful things." 

Samantha stares at her. For all Cassandra's talk of alien ideology, she's never heard her speak like this. This is something new - something Cass has spared them until now. 

"You're not - you can't possibly mean that you approve." 

"Approve? No. But I think maybe I understand. At least a little." 

Relief washes over her, thick and sweet. To her horror, her lips begin to tremble. Warmth rises up in her face, and she can't smother her sobs. "Oh, God, Cass, I-" and then her words dissolve in a flood of tears. 

Cassandra's arms are around her. She makes nonsense sounds into her hair. "Shh, baby girl. There, there." The stupid platitudes make her cry harder. She wishes she could believe them. 

Slowly, she grows calm. Cassandra releases her, and lets her wipe her face and get herself under control. When she has, she bums a cigarette without asking. They smoke in silence for a while. 

"Mom?" 

The two of them turn. Jeffrey's there behind them, hovering in the doorway, looking very, very young. 

"Jeffrey," Cassandra says brightly. "Come and sit with us." 

Jeffrey does. He looks acutely uncomfortable. They wait for Cassandra to speak. Finally, she does. 

"Would you drive me into town?" 

 

~x~ 

 

Well, that's one mystery solved. 

She has often wondered where Jeffrey learned his extensive repertoire of denial strategies. Now, she knows. 

At the knee of the master. 

She's never seen Cassandra in denial before. There has never been a need for that between them. But now, she sees how Cassandra has managed to hold down jobs and make friends in spite of everything. When she wants to, Cassandra can pretend that everything's fine. 

And that's what she's doing now. 

She points out books and tries on clothes. She twitters about the new season's colours. She lavishes presents on Samantha - "early Christmas presents, darling. It's so good to have you home." She treats the three of them to ice cream and lunch. In that order. Jeffrey sits stiffly beside her like a stunned pig waiting for the slaughterer's final blow. 

"I have a funny story to tell you," Cassandra says at last. 

Jeffrey and Samantha exchange worried looks. Cassandra's funny stories are usually anything but. Their reasons for their discomfort differ, but it is acute for both. 

"What is it, Mom?" Jeffrey asks. He shifts awkwardly in his seat. He's been doing that all day. Normally she would tease him for it, but now, she doesn't know what to do. Whether to act like his sister or his lover. In reality, she is a mixture of the two, and she no longer knows where one ends and the other begins. 

Cassandra turns to Samantha. "I ran into an old friend of your mother's the other day, dear," she says. 

Samantha doubts this very much, but she doesn't say so. 

"Did you know, the year you were born, my husband was in Europe? For the whole year?" She says it with the air of someone sharing a juicy bit of gossip over a matronly cup of tea. "He left eleven months before, and came back three months after." 

Just had to spell it out, in case we didn't get the point the first time, Samantha thinks, but she doesn't say it. It's so ridiculous, she ought to laugh, but she just stares. Wondering what the hell Cassandra is up to. She's glossing over the incest (how that word makes her shudder) - she's covering it up - but why? 

"I don't understand," Jeffrey says in a strangled voice. 

"Well, it was all so providential, darling, don't you think? I mean Samantha here isn't your sister. I had no right to raise her. Aren't we lucky we never found out earlier? She might never have come into our lives." 

Ludicrous. None of them believe it. Not even Jeffrey - and God knows, he's always been the first to embrace denial like a long-lost friend. 

Samantha and Jeffrey both stare at her. Cassandra is oblivious. 

"You know, I do like the look of that caesar salad. Jeffrey, would you be a dear and get the waiter?" 

 

~x~ 

 

"I think we should move," Cassandra says mid-twitter. 

Jeffrey looks up from the sink, holding a bowl in sudsy hands. From her position by the cupboard, Samantha notices a growing fracture down the middle of the blue ceramic. It will break soon. 

"What was that?" he says, looking down at Cassandra. Cassandra ignores his scrutiny. She wipes the plate in her hands, and passes it up to Samantha to be put away. 

"I've always wanted to go somewhere where nobody knows us," Cassandra says. Dreamily. Like a wistful little girl. "Leave everything behind. Start fresh." 

Jeffrey would hate that, she thinks, stacking the plate neatly on the pile. He likes predictability. He likes routine. 

"What are you talking about, Mom? We have a life here." He's looking away from Cassandra again, but he still isn't washing up. He's staring out into the night. Like he was last night, Samantha remembers, and she looks away, suppressing a twin flush of desire and shame. 

"Think about it, Jeffrey. We could go where no one knows anything about us. No one to judge us. Wouldn't that be nice?" 

Samantha brings her hand to her mouth. She can't see her reflection too clearly in the window, but she feels very pale. She doesn't think it's fallen into place for Jeffrey yet. 

"We could do whatever we liked," Cassandra says. "All three of us. No-one would ever have to know." 

The bowl breaks in Jeffrey's hand. 

 

~x~ 

 

"Do you believe it?" he asks her when his hand is on her breast. 

She's never lied to him. She won't start now. "No. I don't." 

"I do," he says. "Why would Mom make up something like that?" 

To give you peace, you idiot, she feels like screaming, but she doesn't say it. She just shrugs and lets him ease her jeans down over her hips. 

"My father lies all the time. I think he'd lie about this. Just to torture us." 

Except their father's acknowledgment of her paternity pre-dates what they do in this bed. Pre-dates it by over a decade. She marvels at the power of his selective perception. 

"I believe it," he says, his lips brushing hers. 

She doesn't, but she allows him a non-committal nod as she welcomes him into her mouth. 

He makes love to her with the light on, without shame or pretence or artifice. When he slides into her, there is none of the guilt she has come to expect in his features. Her name falls freely from his lips, not a terrible secret, but a celebration. 

His jubilation is infectious, and she receives his reverent touch with joy. But when they're done, she does not share in his untroubled rest. She would join him in his denial, she thinks, watching him sleep, if it would grant her the peace he has found. 

But that is something she can never do. 

 

~x~ 

 

Cassandra is smoking. 

This is a very different Cassandra. The twittering woman they left when they went to bed is gone. This Cassandra is pensive. Morose. Not to mention, well on the way to inebriation. 

Samantha drops down into the chair in front of her. They hold each other's gazes in the light of the moon. 

"Are you sure about this?" 

The lines of Cassandra's face are hard and old. She shakes her head. Her eyes glitter with tears. 

"Then why?" 

Cassandra lights a cigarette and brings it to her lips. "I couldn't stop it, Samantha. What they did to our family. What they keep on doing to our family." She breathes out in a rush of smoke. There's a hitch in her breathing. The smoke breaks off, lingers, and rises again. "The least I can do is make it easier to live with." 

"You're feeding his denial," she says. Not unkindly. 

Cassandra sniffs, sitting up a little. She taps her cigarette into the ashtray at her side. She says stiffly, "Were you together? Just now?" 

She averts her gaze, mortified, but she nods. Her belly grows small and hard under the weight of Cassandra's scrutiny. 

"Was it better?" 

She nods again. Still mortified. Wondering where Cassandra is going with this. 

"You remember what I said this morning? About concessions made in war?" 

"Yes, I remember." 

"I'm granting you yours, Samantha," Cassandra says. "But you have to grant Jeffrey his." 

She thinks about it. Is Jeffrey's denial any worse than the things they've done together in this house? Any more compromised? Any less of a comfort? To her, it seems so cowardly - so dishonest. But is it really so bad? 

She honestly doesn't know. 

"All right," she says at last. "All right." 

It isn't, but it will have to do. It's all she has to give. 

Cassandra stubs out her cigarette. Still sniffling. "Will you drink with me a while, dear?" 

She nods. She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a waterglass. She allows Cassandra to fill it with cheap vodka, right to the brim. 

They clink glasses. "To concessions made," Cassandra says softly. 

"Concessions made," Samantha agrees. 

They sit there, the older woman and the younger one, drinking together in companionable silence. 

Just a couple of casualties of war.

* * *

  


**Concessions Broken**

Light. 

He feels it pressing against his eyelids, harsh and insistent. He squeezes them tight, instinctively pulling away with a sound of protest until his head is pressed hard to the headboard. 

The light lingers. It assaults him with its stark whiteness for long moments. Finally, though, it subsides. He blinks, and dimly, he sees a sliver of light streak across the sky, leaving him to fumble in the darkness. 

It is a relief. 

For long moments, he lies there, blinking, groping the space beside him. He searches for Samantha, wanting to reassure himself with her presence and her softness. Wanting to feel her hair beneath his hand. 

Then it all comes back. 

He sits bolt upright and throws the covers aside. He gets to his feet and runs out into the hall. "Samantha?" he calls as his footsteps lead him to the doorway of the lounge. He knows how horrible it is to want it to be Samantha when his mother's gone too, but God, it's been so long, he's so scared for her, please- 

It is Samantha, and tangled relief and fear and anguish rise in his chest. Her still form lies on the floor in the middle of the room. For one horrifying moment he fears she might be dead, and his heart is pounding so hard he can feel the ripples right through his body. Vibration and sound meld into one unbearable roar. 

His footsteps slow. Not dead, he tells himself. Not dead. He's not sure whether the shallow rise and fall of her breast is real. He no longer trusts his own senses. He no longer trusts anything, except her. 

She's slumped there in her nightdress. One arm drapes across her body, and her hand lies on the bare floorboards. White skin against pale wood. He thinks about splinters. Splinters, of all things, when that's his *wife*, goddammit, and she's *unconscious*. 

He drops to her side and finds her hand with his. It's cool, and her wrist is thin. The bones protrude at each side. She is breathing, after all, and his heart rate drops back a little. 

"Samantha?" 

She murmurs his name. He feels her hand twitch in his. A slight pulse where she tries to squeeze, and fails. Thank God, he thinks. Thank God. 

"I'm here," he says, rolling her onto her back. He smooths the hair back off her face. "You're home, Samantha. Wake up." She doesn't answer him, and he starts to pat her cheeks, briskly. He can't quite bring himself to slap her, even though he knows it would probably rouse her. "Come on, Samantha, wake up. Get up." 

"Jeffrey," she sighs. Her voice quavers as he shakes her. "I can't - I can't-" 

Fear rises in his throat. "You can't what, Sam? You can't what?" 

"I can't get up. I can't-" 

Oh, no. Not again. Please, no. 

He feels anger. Fear. They propel him to his feet and make him shout. "Yes, you CAN! Come on!" He manhandles her up, dragging her like a piece of meat. He gets her up and releases her, and she slumps back down to the floor with a painful thud. 

"Get up, dammit!" he yells at her in a perfect fever of fury. "Get up!" 

Wide awake now, she stares up at him in the dim light of the moon, rubbing her wrist where he pulled her. Hurt colours her features. 

"You can stand, dammit, now get the hell UP!" His voice sounds brutal and rough, even to his own ears. 

Her expression softens. The hurt fades. "I'm not paralysed, Jeffrey," she says gently. "Not like your mom." 

Oh, my God. 

Remorse washes over him, quelling even his fear for the moment. It drives him to his knees before her, and he pulls her against him, clutching at her back and her hair. "Jesus, Samantha, I'm sorry," he mutters into her shoulder. "I'm so sorry." 

"It's all right, Jeffrey," she whispers. It isn't, he supposes, but he thanks her in his heart for saying so. "Please just help me." 

He helps her, gently this time. He gets her up and lets her lean in to him, supporting her with one arm, letting her clutch at the other. He notices her automatic footsteps. Relief swells in his chest. The pounding in his head dies down. 

But worry rises up in him, too, as he notes the differences in her. Samantha was never really slim. A size twelve, sometimes even a fourteen, with soft, comforting pads of flesh in all the places where women hate them. But now - she's so light. It frightens him. The way her feet tremble when she puts her weight on them frightens him. 

He gets her to their room and deposits her gently onto their bed. She sits there in her nightdress. It smells faintly of sickness and disinfectant. Nothing like the times she's come home before. He kneels down before her, between her knees, and lifts it up over her head. For all the times he's done that, it feels like he's baring her for the first time. But this time, his ragged sigh is not one of desire, but of dismay. 

"Jesus, Samantha," he whispers, touching the side of her breast with his palm, trailing it down over the ridges and valleys of her ribs. "What the hell did they do to you?" 

"I don't know," she says dully. "There were doctors. They said something about DNA. Branched DNA. Something free-floating in my blood. I don't know." 

He can't bear to hear it. He doesn't believe it. He only asked on reflex. No-one did this to her. Certainly not doctors on a spaceship, for God's sake. It's just- 

Well, she didn't do it to herself, did she? 

Never mind. It doesn't matter. What matters is, she's home. And he means to make her well. 

He goes to their cheap laminate dressing table. He opens a drawer. Pulls out a cotton nightdress. 

"No," she says. "One of your shirts. Please?" 

He looks at her in the dim light. Surprised. 

"What?" 

"Just...I've missed you." 

That scares the hell out him. Samantha isn't sentimental. Never has been. She keeps the things that matter in her heart, and to hell with souvenirs. She's joked about it more than once. "I only want what I can carry to my grave, Jeffrey." That doesn't seem so funny now. 

He looks at her, thoughtfully, and nods. He turns back to the dresser a moment, but then he reconsiders. He pulls the shirt he's wearing up over his head, and slips it down over hers. The body heat will do her good, anyway, he decides. But he doesn't like the way she crosses her arms over herself. The way she snuggles visibly into it, breathing his warmth and his scent. She looks uncomfortably like a child hugging a teddy bear for comfort. She left him as his wife. Now, she's his little sister again. That takes him to some very troubling places in his mind. 

He eases her legs up onto the bed, covers her, and gets in beside her. She presses herself into his arms with a sigh, and that's a little better. Her sigh is not exactly one of desire, but it is very much the sigh of a woman back in the arms of the man she loves. He kisses her hair, and he feels her lips on his chest. He allows himself to breathe fully for the first time since he found her. 

"How long was I gone?" 

He swallows the usual retort. Even if her absence was voluntary- 

even *though* her absence was voluntary, clearly, something happened to do this to her. Of course she doesn't know how long she's been gone - how could she? He wonders if whoever did this could have assaulted her. That new date rape drug they're talking about, maybe. Rohypnol. He wonders why that idea doesn't outrage him as it should. He wonders why the idea of taking her to be seen by a doctor does. 

"Three months," he says. He likes the way his voice sounds. Mild. Neutral. 

"Oh," she says. Her voice is matter-of-fact too. Quiet, maybe. That's all. "Is Cassandra home?" 

He shakes his head. "Mom went away a week ago. No idea where. She didn't leave a note. You know what she's like." 

She snorts. "Yeah," she says dryly, "I know what she's like." Lightly mocking. They have had this argument many times, and he supposes they will have it many more, but the show of fire pleases him. He almost wishes she would go on with it. Call him a coward. Talk about denial. 

Almost. 

"I missed you," he says after a while. 

"Me, too." She presses closer. "Love you." 

"Same." 

They drift off to sleep there together in the dark. 

 

~x~ 

 

When he wakes, the guilt hits him, hard and fast and fierce. 

The sunlight streams over her through their bedroom window. Without the cover of darkness, he sees her, small, thin, with shadows beneath her eyes, in her cheeks, in the hollows of her collarbones. 

He should have looked at her properly. He should have turned on a light. He should have taken her to a doctor. 

"Samantha," he says, shaking her gently. "Wake up. We need to get you to a hospital." 

She blinks, shaking her head. Still groggy and sleepy. "No," she whispers. "No hospitals, Jeffrey. Please. I couldn't bear it." 

He thinks it over. Remembers her one hospital stay years before. Appendicitis. She screamed and screamed and screamed. They had to strap her down to anaesthetise her. He'd never seen her like that. 

"You're sick," he argues, but his voice is quiet and tender. There's no calculation about it, no thought of whether that might make her easier to persuade. There's a rawness, a vulnerability about her that moves him, somehow. He smooths her hair back off her face. "You need medical attention, Samantha. You know that." 

Her eyes are wet with sudden tears. "Oh, please, Jeffrey, no." 

He could get her there by force, he supposes. She's certainly not well enough to stop him. But somehow he can't bear the thought of that. 

"What about a doctor, then," he says at last. "One that will come to the house." 

She looks very unsure, but she doesn't discount it out of hand, at least. In a way, her willingness to consider it worries him even more. 

She looks away, out the window, frowning. He just sits there with her. Lets her take her time. Her voice comes, small and quiet. "You'll be with me the whole time?" 

He feels a lump rising in his throat, and he doesn't really know why. "Yes," he says, taking her hand between both of his. "Yes, I will." 

"And you won't tell them the things I say? About the experiments? They'd think I was crazy. Hell, you think I'm crazy." 

"I don't think you're crazy, Samantha," he says. He doesn't, even though he doesn't believe her, either. 

"But you won't-" 

"No. I won't tell them. I won't let them take you anywhere you don't want to go." 

She nods. Still looking out the window. A low sigh ripples through her body, something he feels rather than hears. Finally, she turns back to him and lifts his hands to her mouth. She kisses his knuckles, nodding against them. 

"All right. If you can find someone who'll come, then all right." 

 

~x~ 

 

Wonder of wonders, he finds a doctor who still makes house calls. God bless Charlotte, Alabama, population 976. He is under no illusions about his chances of finding such a doctor in New York or LA. 

He busies himself making tea for them, and he takes Samantha's in to her, leaving the doctor in the kitchen to write his notes. 

"Okay?" he asks her, putting her cup on the nightstand at her side. 

She looks up at him. He's washed her, now, and she's swathed in a big white button-down shirt. It shames him, somehow, that he finds her frailty beautiful. 

"Yeah," she says, smiling up at him. She struggles to sit up, and he lets her do it herself, sensing that the small victory is important to her. When she does it, he puts the tea into her hands. "He seems nice." 

"Yeah, he does," he says. "He's from the next town over. Has a practice there." The meaningless information seems to please her. She's smiling when he leaves her. 

He comes back out to the kitchen and takes a seat opposite the doctor. He's a benign-looking man in his fifties, Jeffrey estimates, and he has a calming manner. Just the sort of doctor they need. 

"Now, you're her..." 

He pauses, pen poised over his notebook. He looks at Jeffrey and waits. 

The innocent question causes Jeffrey to think at lightning speed. Brother or husband? He wonders whether this will create a paper trail. Then he thinks of Samantha in an obviously shared bed, photos of them on the nightstand, and her insistence that he stay while she was examined, and realises he has no choice. 

"She's my wife." 

The doctor lifts the mug at his side. "Thanks," he says with a nod, drinking from it. "And how long has she been like this?" 

"I'm not completely sure," he says. "I've been away for a few weeks visiting family. I found her this way when I came home." He hopes the doctor doesn't check on that. Not that he has any reason to check, of course - that is, assuming they can get through this without raising any suspicions. 

"And she won't go to a hospital? Why is that?" 

He's been expecting this. "She had a bad experience when she was younger. An orderly after an operation. She was interfered with," he fibs in an appropriately delicate tone. The doctor makes a small sound of sympathy. "I'm willing to care for her at home, if you'll help. We don't have insurance, but we have savings." He does have insurance and they don't have any savings worth speaking of, but they'll just have to find a way. He can't risk claiming for her on his insurance. 

"May work out more affordable to care for her at home, in that case," the doctor says, more into his coffee mug than to Jeffrey. "I'm willing to come by and look in on her every day. I have a sister who lives down the road a little ways, and I see her most days. I won't charge you the call-out fee. Just the consultation." 

Jeffrey wonders why he's never seen him at the gas station, but then he realises there is no sister. Their threadbare home has told the man all he needs to know about their "savings". At any other time, the kindness would shame him. Now, he could fall on his knees in gratitude. 

He manages instead, "Thank you. That's - very kind." 

The doctor waves this aside. "Jeffrey, I have to tell you, I feel bad even taking that. I have no idea what's wrong with your wife. She's seriously ill - you don't need me to tell you that. But that's all I know. I'm not seeing any visual signs of cancer. My first thought was leukaemia, and I'll have to wait on the bloods to exclude that, but I don't think it is. Her gums aren't bleeding, her lymph nodes are down - I really don't think that's it." 

"What about that new thing all the papers are talking about?" he wonders. "Acquired Immunity-" 

"AIDS? It's not that new, and it's not impossible if she was assaulted, but I'd be surprised. I haven't seen a case of it myself yet, but from what the CDC fliers are saying, she doesn't fit any of the stages they've identified." 

He is oddly disappointed. He knows how horrible that is, to hope for such a terrible diagnosis, but it beats branched DNA, whatever that is. At least people are working on treatments for AIDS. Even the realisation that he would have it too doesn't completely frighten the thought into submission. 

"Is she going to get better?" he asks at last. 

The doctor - Barnable, his name is - Dr Barnable shifts in his seat. "If we can get her weight up, I can't see why not," he says, "but I won't deny I'm worried. If you could get her to agree to go up to Montgomery for tests, it might help." 

He shakes his head. "She won't." 

"Well, we can't force her. She's a competent adult. She's entitled to refuse treatment. But if she ever loses consciousness, Jeffrey, you take the opportunity, you hear?" 

"Will do." 

The doctor shakes his hand when he leaves. 

 

~x~ 

 

The days pass in a blur. 

Dr Barnable comes every day. Every day, he shakes his head. Bloods are transported to and fro. It isn't leukaemia. It isn't AIDS. It isn't any of the obscure syndromes Barnable digs up in the medical journals late at night when he should be screwing his wife, or whatever he does when he isn't worrying about a pair of blue-collar drifters who haven't earned even a hello from anyone else in town. 

Jeffrey marvels at his concern, but it worries him, too. What if he starts talking about them to the locals? What if the locals rally around them? Start offering casseroles and kindly cups of tea? Start fundraising for their medical bills? Worse, report their plight in the local newspaper? God knows they need the support, but they can't afford that kind of scrutiny. They've been careful, kept the paper trail to a minimum, but there's only so far that goes. The only documents that count are the ones given to Cassandra when she agreed to raise Samantha. Whatever the truth of it, in the eyes of the law, they are brother and sister. 

And what if she's taken- 

His throat feels very tight. 

what if she *leaves* again? This is why they've hidden themselves away, far more than any concerns about anyone's idle curiosity. This is why she doesn't work, doesn't go out, doesn't make friends. If she does, someone, someday will report her missing. Even if he doesn't serve time for her presumed murder, he'll certainly serve time for incest. And when she returns, so will she. 

She's getting weaker. 

He knows this. That's why he worries, now, about Barnable and his kindly concern. Because he doesn't want to think about her falling weight. About her thin shoulders. About the way she blinks, just a little slower than before. Like it's a terrible effort. 

He still makes love to her. He doesn't think he should. He feels that he's taking from her, somehow. But she insists that she wants him to. It is a gentle love, infinitely careful and slow, and when she comes, he feels the ripples deep within her. They don't reach her much-too-slender thighs. 

Somewhere along the line, she begins to rally. He has hope. Then she slips back. This becomes a recurring pattern. He starts looking into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. They call it the Yuppie Flu, but a few doctors are starting to say it's real. 

During her remissions, as he begins to call them (although the remissions are never total), things are better than ever. She doesn't go away any more - not even for a day or two. They spend days in bed, talking, laughing, sharing memories and trading banter. There is a new dimension to their lovemaking, something more loving and bonded than anything they've shared before. He sets her up in her armchair on the verandah and paints her toenails the way she likes them, and he makes her laugh by tickling the soles of her feet. Jeffrey is no stranger to caring for a family member, and for him, it's a small trade-off for the happiness they've found. He begins to take her relapses in his stride. When he rises one morning to find his mother smoking on the porch, his happiness is complete. That is, until she starts to question him about Samantha's condition. 

"Branched DNA?" she says. She is very pale. 

"That's what she says. But Dr Barnable thinks-" 

"Has she been taken since then?" 

He fights down the flare of irritation he feels. "She hasn't been away since then, no. She hasn't been well enough." 

There is no debate about whether Samantha is "taken" or whether she "goes away". Cassandra just reverses away from him and wheels herself indoors without another word. 

She emerges from their bedroom an hour later. Her eyes are red and wet. Jeffrey stares at her, frowning, and then he pushes past her into the room, closing the door behind him. 

Samantha is curled up on the bed, close to the window. Looking out. His bewilderment growing, he sits down at her side. 

"Samantha?" 

Her back is tight and stiff, and she's trembling. He puts his hand on her shoulder and, gently, turns her to face him. 

She's crying. 

"What did she say?" he says roughly. "What did she say to you?" 

She puts her arms around him. Still weeping. "Please just hold me." 

He does, and the way she holds him worries him. So much tighter than he thought she still could. She pulls back a little, and tears linger on her eyelashes. She kisses him, long and deep and hungry. "I love you, Jeffrey," she whispers. "God, I love you. So much." 

He's still bewildered, but he meets her with hunger of his own. He makes love to her, and she kisses him the whole time - on his mouth, on his eyes and on his cheeks and in his hair. Touching him like the most precious of gifts. It fills him with awe, but it scares him, too. 

It feels like a goodbye. 

 

~x~ 

 

"What did you say to her?" 

There is venom in his voice. For all the times he's felt like screaming at his mother's ravings and her delusions, he's never truly hated her. But now- 

Cassandra stubs out her cigarette. She pushes her wheelchair out from the table and swivels to face him. She sits there in the middle of the room, looking calmly at him. There's a hint of motherly kindness in her features, but it's not enough to placate him. Her serenity bothers him. 

"She's dying, Jeffrey." 

He feels his hands clench into fists at his sides. "You told her that?" 

"She had a right to know." God, the complacency in her eyes. She sits there, saying his wife, his twenty-four-year-old wife is going to die like it's the most natural thing in the world. Like it's how the universe is meant to work. 

Fuck that. 

He works very hard to keep his voice level. He can feel the anger bubbling up in his chest. His breathing is fast and shallow. He forces out, "What else did you say?" 

"Well, I told her that her life had meaning. That she helped the aliens. They're trying to find a way to help us, you know. They're trying-" 

"Shut up!" he screams. "Shut up, shut up, shut UP!" He goes to her and leans over her, holding each side of her chair with his hands. God, he'd love to shove her off a cliff right now. Anything to make her just stop. "All my life you have tortured this family with your bullshit and your lies. You made her believe it, too. She goes out there, and I don't know what the hell she does - whether she does drugs or sleeps on the street or sells herself or what. And she does it because you've convinced her she's some goddamn chosen one for the alien race, and she has to keep going away to make the lie come true." His face is hot and red. Flushed with fury. "Whatever happened to her out there, it's your fault, and I don't want to hear another word of it. Ever. If I do, I will take her and leave you and never come back. Do you understand me?" 

Cassandra stares up at him. Eyes wide. Shrinking back. 

Jesus Christ. She's afraid of him. 

He pushes himself back away from her. Ashamed of his outburst. He goes to the kitchen sink and stands there, his back to her, his shoulders stiff and hard. He's trembling with fury. Shock. Grief. Shit, he doesn't even know which is which any more. He runs his hands through his hair and squeezes his eyes shut tight. There's no method, no meaning to any of it. Just blind groping for some way to get himself under control. 

Finally, he does. 

His breathing slows. He stands there. Still. Quiet. Heartsick. He hears his mother flick her lighter and light a cigarette. When she breathes out, it comes as a ragged sigh. 

"I didn't mean it," he lies after a while. 

"Oh, yes, you did," she says. Her voice is cold and sure. "You did." 

He nods. "Yeah. I did." 

"I don't think we should speak for a while, Jeffrey." 

He nods again. He doesn't look at her. "I think that's probably a good idea." 

She wheels herself away without another word. 

 

~x~ 

 

"That was cruel, Jeffrey." 

He doesn't look at her. Just pulls his jumper and shirt over his head and dumps them unceremoniously on the floor. "You heard." 

"The whole neighbourhood heard." 

He kicks off his trousers. "We don't have a neighbourhood. That's why we moved here." He looks around for his pyjama pants and finds them. 

"Don't be an ass. What are you doing?" 

"Well, since the day got off to such a fine start, I figured I'd go back to bed. Wanna join me?" 

Too late, he realises what a callous thing that is to say to a bedridden woman. He's really flying in the sensitivity stakes today. He figures he's still streets ahead of his mother, though. 

"Asshole," she says, and turns away to look out the window. 

He slips into bed beside her and watches her. Lets her give him the silent treatment. Hell, it's not like she has control over anything else right now. And he really doesn't trust himself not to make matters worse. 

Eventually, she relents. She turns to face him again, and when he takes her hand in his, she leans in and kisses him gently on the lips. All is forgiven. 

They lie there, watching one another in silence for a while. She's waiting for him to talk, and he doesn't really want to, but he does it anyway, because he's never been able to refuse her anything. 

Especially now. 

"I don't understand how you can defend her after what she said to you." 

She shrugs. "I don't know. It's just - even when I say things you don't want to hear, or that you don't believe, I've never felt that you were angry with me. But your mom - it upsets you so much. There's a little part of you that hates her for what she believes. I don't understand it, Jeffrey." She shifts a little closer, brow furrowed in query. "Why does it upset you like that?" 

He thinks about it. He's not completely sure himself, but he thinks - *thinks* - she might have hit on it with her question. 

"You hate it as much as I do, Sam," he says after a moment. "You don't want to go. You want to be here with me. Whatever it is you do when you're away, you never, ever want to go." Her frown clears. "But Mom - she *wants* to go! All this saving the world with the aliens crap. She doesn't give a damn how we suffer when she's gone!" 

Tenderness softens her features. She strokes his cheek with the back of her hand. He turns his face in to it and kisses it. Still watching her. "You're wrong, Jeffrey," she says. "So wrong. She knows just what it does to us, and it breaks her heart." 

He stares at her. "I don't understand." 

"You know how I'm always talking about denial?" He nods. "Well, your Mom does it, too, in a way. Why do you think she needs to believe that what we go through serves a higher good?" 

"Oh." He has to admit, it makes sense. He feels very small. 

"Please try to think kindly of her. I know you've suffered." To his horror, warmth rises up in his face. "But please." 

"You're not dying, Samantha," he forces out. "I don't accept that." 

"Jeffrey," she sighs. She draws him close. 

They make love again. It doesn't really help, but he doesn't know what else to do. 

 

~x~ 

 

She deteriorates quickly after that. 

He can hardly bear to look at his mother. He blames her for Samantha's downturn. It's all he can do not to strangle her with his bare hands. 

"We should have a baby," he says from nowhere one day. 

They're by the window, and Samantha is cradled in his arms. She stares up at him, a wounded look on her face. He doesn't understand why that hurts her. 

"A baby." Her voice is small. "Why?" 

"I just - thought it would be nice." 

In truth, he hopes a pregnancy will make her fight again. That if she won't fight for herself or for him, then maybe she'll fight for their child. And he still isn't convinced it isn't Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. There have been cases of remission in pregnancy. 

"We can't have a baby, Jeffrey." 

"Why not?" he demands. She opens her mouth, but he forestalls her. "I know what you think about us and you know I don't agree - but for the sake of argument." She sighs, and nods for him to go on with it. "I've been reading. Children born of brother and sister are only slightly more prone to birth defects than the rest of the population." 

"But Jeffrey-" 

He shakes his head, warming to his argument. "People have babies with much higher risk factors *all* the time. Women over thirty. Men with haemophilia. It's only sustained inbreeding, over many generations that causes problems. And at most, we only share one parent, so the risk is less again." 

She is quiet for a moment. She picks at a stray thread on his shirt. "And what if we did it, Jeffrey? What if we had a beautiful little girl with your eyes and my hair." He smiles down at her, and she smiles back, but her eyes are wet. "And one day people found out about us. She'd be living proof. We'd go to jail. And they'd take her away." Her voice breaks a little. "We'd lose her. I couldn't bear that." 

"We could hide her the way we hide ourselves," he argues. "Homeschool. An isolated farm. We could have more so she wouldn't be alone." 

"If we isolated ourselves as much as we'd need to, Jeffrey, they'd find solace in one another, just like we did. I don't regret what we did, but we can't create that situation for another generation just to protect ourselves. We can't create that kind of legacy." 

"So it's okay for us, but not for our kids?" He can afford to be flip about this, because he doesn't really believe they're brother and sister at all. It's all academic. He sees what she's getting at, though. A vision rises in his mind of generation after generation of hidden families. A vicious cycle of one forbidden love after another. Jesus. 

"Jeffrey," she says. "Think about what we went through. Before your mother told us...what she told us. When you believed I was your sister. Think about all the shame and all the guilt you carried." He looks away. He can hardly bear to remember that. They were so goddamn young. "Do you really want that for our children?" 

He bows his head. "No. I don't." 

"And even if they changed the law tomorrow. Even if we got blood tests and they proved we weren't related." He's considered that himself, but he's never suggested it. Now, he wonders why. "Even then, they'd still have to live with...with what happens to me. With what happens to your mom. Jeffrey, we can't. You know we can't." 

He hates hearing her talk like this. He hates hearing all the things she can't do. She can't have children. She can't have friends. She can't have a job. 

"Maybe I should have let you go," he says at last. "Maybe I should have let you find someone else. Someone you could just love and be out in the open with and-" his voice breaks. 

She draws back to look at him. "It wouldn't have helped, Jeffrey. I could never have had that kind of relationship. Anyone I married would have come under suspicion whenever I disappeared. I would have had to hide, no matter who I was with." Her voice is gentle. "And I never wanted to be with anyone but you." 

Her image swims before him. 

"You've given me a lifetime of love, Jeffrey. You don't have anything to be sorry for." 

The tears come then, and he weeps in her arms. 

 

~x~ 

 

"Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?" 

"Lots of things," he says off-handedly. "Like most kids, I guess." Samantha looks at him curiously, and he realises with a pang that she never thought that far. She just wanted to survive. 

But she doesn't talk about that. She rests her chin in her hands. Intrigued. Childlike. "There must have been something in particular, though. I mean, I doubt you saw yourself pumping gas all your life." 

"Pumping gas isn't so bad, Samantha. It's worth it." It's true he wishes now and then for something more, but he doesn't think about it much. He has a happy marriage. A home. It's enough. 

"But there was *something*, wasn't there?" she wheedles. She's weak today, but she's more than making up for it in spirit. 

He finds himself smiling broadly at her. "Well, yeah." 

Her mischievous grin grows wide. "So? Tell me!" 

He gives a chagrined sigh. "All right. If you must know, I wanted to be an FBI agent. I wanted to catch the bad guys and fight for truth, justice, and the American way. And all that crap." 

"That's cute." 

"Cute?" he echoes. "I said FBI agent, not ballerina." 

They laugh together, and he pulls her in for a hug. He can hardly keep his hands off her these days. He needs to touch her. He needs to feel that she's still there. 

She pulls back a little and kisses him on the nose. "Agent Spender," she says. "I like that. You should do that, Jeffrey." 

"I wouldn't pass the background check," he says complacently. Still holding her. 

"You might," she says. "This is the only place we ever told anyone officially that we were married. If you moved on somewhere else - if you used the old place as your last work reference, said you'd travelled in between - you might get through. You're working off the books at the gas station. I don't see how anyone could connect the dots." 

His good humour fades. A future apart. That's what she's talking about. That's what she's planning for. 

Grief rises in his chest. "Samantha..." 

"I don't expect you to put your dreams on hold in my memory, Jeffrey. I know you will for a while. But you shouldn't do that forever. I don't want that." 

He bows his head. "You're not going to die, Samantha." 

"Yes, I am, Jeffrey. Surely you can see that." 

Yes, he can. That's what makes it all so goddamn hard. 

"I just don't understand-" 

"Understand what?" 

He meets her gaze once more. "Why that doesn't bother you any more." 

Her voice is gentle. "I don't have any unfinished business, Jeffrey. Everything I ever could have had, you've already given me. And I always knew I could never have had anything else." 

He knows she means it kindly. That he is everything to her. That he makes her happy. But all he can hear is the dark side of it. That there is nothing more he can give her. 

The tears come. "I just wish you wanted to stay as much as I want you to stay." 

"Oh, Jeffrey," she whispers, and she's crying too. "Oh, Jeffrey." 

They make love for the final time. 

 

~x~ 

 

She sinks rapidly the following day. At nightfall she slips into a coma. 

He considers taking her to the hospital. But Barnable confirms what he already knows - the hospital will do her no good. So he keeps her at home, in her bed, and he waits by her side. 

It takes three days. Barnable makes her comfortable. He sets up a saline drip. Teaches Jeffrey to tend to it. He checks in twice a day. Jeffrey and Cassandra are barely speaking, but she makes him meals and brings them to him at Samantha's side. He accepts her kindness with what little generosity he has left for her, with a small, watery smile. 

He reads to her. He tells her stories from his early childhood, before he met her. He tells her his one good memory of their father. He tells her that he believes her - about the abductions, about her being his sister. He doesn't, not entirely - but there's a little part of him that does, and he tells her that, for whatever it might mean to her. He tells her that he will follow his dream of the FBI, even if he doesn't want it any more, because he knows she thinks he should. 

He finds the wedding ring he bought her years ago. He'd known that she would never accept it - it was so frivolous, and she would be afraid of losing it while she was away from him - but he'd bought it anyway, and he gets it out now. He takes it from its box and presses it into her hand, and tells her about the colour of the stones. Then he slips it onto her finger. "I only want what I can carry to my grave, Jeffrey" - and he intends to make sure she will. 

Looking at it, thinking about it, he understands her indifference to the concrete. He understands, all too late why she couldn't bring herself to embrace the physical and the real. Because those things were fleeting. They were lost to her every time she was taken away. That was why the only comfort she ever allowed herself was to draw him inside her and to keep something of him within her. Because it was the only thing she could carry with her when she was gone. 

The realisation is devastating. 

His mother finds him weeping in the middle of the night. Pressing into her hands anything soft and beautiful he can find. Rose petals. A silk scarf. A feather. Anything. Cassandra holds him and rocks him. "She knows, sweetheart. She knows." 

"I couldn't - I couldn't -" 

"I know." Bullshit. She can't know. He doesn't even know what he's saying himself. But it helps anyway. 

He blurts out, "Were we wrong? Was I wrong?" 

Cassandra shakes her head. "There's only light and dark, Jeffrey. You gave her light. You can't not know that." 

He weeps until he's dry and hoarse, and then she releases him. She kisses Samantha, and she leaves him to wait in the dim light of the moon. 

Samantha - his Samantha, his wife, his sister, his wife - she draws her final breath an hour later, as night melds into dawn. He watches numbly as she takes a breath, releases it, and just...stops. His vision blurs, and there are tears - just a few. A single sob. He feels unutterably alone. 

He detaches the saline line from the cannula and hangs it over the top of the bag. He peels off the plaster strip from the back of her hand. He eases out the slender needle and rests it on the nightstand, and, automatically, he rubs her skin to ease the discomfort she feels. Would have felt. 

He stays at her side, stroking her face and her hands and her hair until her warmth is gone. When finally there is no more hint of life left in her, he bows his head to hers and kisses her forehead, and he offers her the only thing he ever had for her. 

"I love you, Samantha. I love you." 

His tears spill over his cheeks and onto hers. 

 

~x~ 

 

When Barnable comes to sign the death certificate, Jeffrey confides in him. 

It's a stupid, stupid thing to do. He wonders if the doctor will report them. A part of him almost hopes he does. Perversely, he feels that it would help, somehow. That it would bear witness, somehow, to who she was. To what they were to one another. 

Barnable doesn't report them. He offers no judgement, no disapproval, no approval either. He just pats Jeffrey's shoulder and offers quiet words of comfort. 

He does not, thank God, offer rationalisations. 

He couldn't bear to hear those right now. They loved each other, dammit, and he will not have anyone say that it was just the situation that made them that way. He will never accept that he only loved her because she was all he had. It may be truth, but it isn't his truth. And it never will be. 

The doctor gives him the incriminating file when he leaves. 

 

~x~ 

 

"Where will you go?" 

"Maryland," he says, hefting a cardboard box into the back seat of his dirty old utility. "Turns out I'm eligible for a DOD scholarship. Because of Dad." 

His mother sits there behind him, watching him from the path. "Are you sure about this, Jeffrey? I know we haven't been on the best of terms, but you've got a home here as long as you want one. I'm not going anywhere." 

Until the next time, he thinks, but he doesn't say it. They're rebuilding a tentative relationship, and he's working very hard not to jeopardise that. So is she, he supposes, because she doesn't talk about aliens any more. Not to him, anyway. 

"I know, Mom," he says, slamming the door shut. He turns to face her. "But this is what she wanted for me. And I don't know what else to do." 

She nods. "I loved her, Jeffrey. If I could have stopped what happened to her-" 

"I know that, Mom." 

They fall silent. Years of blame and doubt rise up in the space between mother and son. They linger a moment, then fade away. Until the next time. 

"What will you do with the ashes?" she asks at last. 

"Scatter them," he says. "I don't know where." 

"Make sure it's somewhere beautiful." 

"I will." 

Another silence. There have been a lot of silences between them since Samantha died. That's one of the reasons he can't stay. He realises now that Samantha was what held he and Cassandra together. She was the keeper of the truth, whatever that really was, while he and Cassandra fought against it in their own private ways. And without her, all they can do is abrade against each other like a couple of raw nerves. Opening each other's wounds over and over again. 

"Are you sure you'll be all right here?" he asks finally. 

"That nice Dr Barnable has arranged for the county nurse to look in on me now and then. I'll be fine." She looks up at him, suddenly forlorn. "You'll be in touch, won't you, Jeffrey?" 

"I need some time, Mom. But eventually, yeah." 

"Well, I'll be waiting here. Or not far away, anyway." 

"Thanks." 

He drops to his knees at her side and kisses her. It's an awkward kiss, a dutiful one, but they clutch hands and hold on tight. That's where the love is. In their hands. 

At last, they release each other, and he rises. He dusts off his knees. His mother watches, and for a moment, he is a little boy again, cleaning himself off after a tumble. He says impulsively, "I love you, Mom." 

"Me too, Jeffrey." 

He climbs up into the driver's side of the utility and closes the door. Samantha's ashes are beside him, and so are the letters she left him. He hasn't read those yet. He supposes he will read them one day, but for now, he needs to believe that they still have things to say to one another. That it isn't over yet. 

It occurs to him, as he drives away, that she lived her life by his side as much as she could. That she is by his side even now. 

The road shifts and blurs before him. 

He wipes his eyes, and keeps on going.

* * *

  


**The Reckoning**

THE INNOCENCE 

Cassandra likes to watch. 

Cassandra likes to watch her children. She likes to watch everything from this bedroom window of hers, but she especially likes to watch her children. 

There's her son. She tries not to favour one over the other, but she's only human, and Jeffrey was always hers, so he has a special place in her heart. Jeffrey has all of his father's good looks, but none of his weakness and malice. At worst, he has a bit of reserve, a bit of restraint. And that's not really such a bad thing. 

And her daughter - lovely Samantha. Cassandra took her in for the money...for the advantages her ex-husband promised their son if she helped him. But however selfish her motives, she has done her best for the girl. And Samantha has grown into such a beautiful woman. A confidante and friend. 

Mind you, it isn't only the children she watches. She watches everything. Her paralysis three years ago was a terrible blow, but it has its benefits, as well. Thanks to her insurance, she doesn't have to work. She doesn't have to go out and be in the big bad world with its big bad problems. They aren't well off, but the bills are taken care of. She can sit here in her bed by her window, watching through deceptively transparent drapes, and the world is all there for her consumption - and none of it needs to hurt. 

Some would call it pathetic. She knows that. But Cassandra Spender is a pragmatist, and she has no ideals about the nobility of suffering. Suffering is horrible, and needless suffering is stupid. Others can suffer in the name of meaning or fullness of life or whatever ridiculous philosophies they choose to make for themselves, but for her part, Cassandra is happy to be safe and warm in her room, watching the world go by. 

She sees the trains come and go, just beyond the back fence. She sees the school children pass over the tracks, heedless of the danger, walking to and from school. Over the hedge, she sees Mr Henderson next door leave for work in the morning. He goes out the back door instead of the front, because he likes to pat the dogs on the way out. 

The milkman uses the back door, too. He comes to Mrs Henderson every morning an hour later. Cassandra was cool to Mrs Henderson for a while after that began, but when she noticed Mr Henderson's own late-night comings and goings, she decided that they must both be playing around, and to her mind, that was perfectly fair. 

The children try to persuade her to buy another bed. It's true that this one isn't ideal. It takes her the better part of ten minutes to pull herself into it, and she won't let them help her, because she doesn't want them to know just how difficult it is. 

But it lines up so beautifully with the window. 

Cassandra says no. 

Because Cassandra likes to watch. 

 

THE KNOWLEDGE 

Samantha is laughing. 

Cassandra loves watching her children like this, late at night on the back verandah. They sit out there a lot. Jeffrey comes home from the late shift a bit after midnight, and Samantha waits for him, smoking cigarettes bummed from Cassandra's bag. Cassandra doesn't mind. It's nice that she's there to keep him company at the end of the day. 

They probably think she's asleep this late, but she likes to watch. She can't hear what they say - she doesn't try - but she loves the way they look at each other, with shining eyes and smiles. She can't ever remember her brother looking at her like that. She thinks it's sweet, the way they've grown up into such good friends. And truth be told, she feels rather proud to have raised such a harmonious family. Not like those horrible Edison brats across the street. Twins, but you'd never know it, the way they talk to each other. 

This night, the children are a little louder than usual. She can see a bottle of wine, and two glasses. That must account for the laughter. Jeffrey is gesticulating broadly. Perhaps imitating some customer at the gas stop. Samantha leans against him, giggling. The wine is more than halfway gone. 

The change comes without warning. 

One moment, they're sitting there, laughing easily. The next, Jeffrey's face takes on an intensity Cassandra has never seen. 

Calmly, confidently, he tugs Samantha into his arms. 

She doesn't understand at first. Half-formed, fragmentary explanations are considered and discarded with barely a conscious thought. But when Samantha strokes his cheek with the back of her hand, Jeffrey turns his face and kisses it, and there can be no mistaking the heat in their locked gaze. 

She feels very cold. 

She flinches when they kiss. "Jeffrey, oh, my God, don't," she whispers when his hands stray to the buttons on Samantha's dress. She feels the way she felt when Jeffrey was six and he very nearly pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove. She wants to go out there and stop them before it can go any further, but even if she could bring herself to move, it's too late, because they've done this before. She sees it in the way he kisses her - so sure of himself, and of her. In the way she touches him, no awkwardness, no hesitation. They touch each other as lovers. Comfortable lovers, who know each other in body and soul. 

The knowledge drives a cruel, lancing wound deep in her belly. It creeps out in a leisurely crawl until her whole body is tight and hard. Her hands are trembling. 

She watches as they fall back onto the wooden boards. She watches as Jeffrey runs his hand along Samantha's thigh. She turns away when his hand travels higher, beneath her skirt, because there are some things a mother should never have to see, and her son bringing his sister to orgasm is one of them. 

She lies there staring at the ceiling. It takes an enormous exercise of will - there's something horribly tantalising about the idea of looking, rather like looking for human remains at the site of a car crash - but she doesn't look. She doesn't look until - a long, long time later - she hears the back door bang shut. She hears their footsteps, and then one of their bedroom doors clicks shut as well - which one, she couldn't say. But definitely only one of them. 

She wonders if they are stupid enough to share a bed right under her nose. But then, of course they are, she realises. Jeffrey just bought a double bed, and that should have told her something straight away. Sure, he likes the extra space - who doesn't? - but it had seemed disproportionately extravagant, given his meagre income. 

She feels stupid. 

Now that the initial shock has passed, she feels, more than anything, incredibly gullible and deceived. Memories wash over her - a hundred sweet family moments that suddenly seem sinister and tainted. How many times did they all sit in front of the television in the dark, Jeffrey and Samantha on the couch while Cassandra sat in her chair? Did they touch each other? Play footsy under the coffee table? Did Samantha's hand ever stray into Jeffrey's lap, and work his fly undone? They are horrible, lurid images, and she can't shift them from her mind. In truth, she doesn't try. She revels in them, nursing her growing sense of rage. 

She feels betrayed. 

Betrayed by her son, though she can't pinpoint precisely why. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because far more that, she feels betrayed by Samantha. She took that girl in when she had nowhere else to go! She was her ex-husband's bastard daughter by some mistress or other and Cassandra never held it against her. Never said a word against Samantha's mother in her presence. She gave that girl shelter even when the child support dried up. 

Samantha's mother. Cassandra's thoughts linger there. No matter what the paperwork says, she still thinks it was that trollop Teena Mulder. 

She only met Teena a handful of times, but she remembers a vivacious woman who held Cassandra in barely-concealed contempt. Teena was awfully modern and daring. She wore clothes like Jackie Kennedy's and talked about women's rights while smoking cigarettes in a long, thin holder, while Cassandra stayed home and kept her house nice and knitted booties for her coming baby. Teena thought Cassandra dowdy and backward and provincial, and didn't try very hard to hide it. Eventually, Charles had thought the same. Who could blame him, with a fast woman like that in comparison? 

When Teena got pregnant, Cassandra hoped Charles would stay home. She'd had Jeffrey by then, she had her figure back and a maternal glow, and she worked hard to keep herself nice and pretty. She put on makeup and started smoking too, and hoped against hope that Charles would tire of Teena. But he didn't, and finally, when Teena's daughter was born, he left her. 

To Cassandra's surprise, Teena stayed with her husband, and in some ways that hurt even more. She was almost as angry for Charles as she was for herself. That manipulative little whore destroyed their lives, while she kept her respectability and her family. It wasn't right. She never let Charles into the house again (I won't confuse Jeffrey like that, Charles) but they stayed lovers on and off for years after. She watched him grow sad and morose and retire to his horrible little room with its typewriter and its TV and its empty bottles of scotch. Just another pathetic victim of the vivacious Teena Mulder. 

She looked for the Mulder children in 1972, when she went to the meeting at the air force base with the other families (It's important, Cassandra. Do it for your country. Do it for me) but there was no sign of them. Bill Mulder arrived late, but no Teena, and no children. 

Perhaps Teena had left both the men for someone else again. Well, if Teena didn't survive when the aliens helped them outlive the nuclear holocaust, it would be her own fault. Cassandra might be boring, but her loyalty would be repaid. 

She thinks now that Charles tracked Teena down, and abducted the younger child. Perhaps he failed to get the older one, or perhaps the older one was Bill's after all. Cassandra never asked and was never told. 

She has never spoken of her suspicions to Samantha. After all, if Teena is her mother, better that Samantha be far away from her mother's influence. But blood will tell, she realises now. She should never have let a Mulder girl near her son. 

She thinks about Mulder women and Spender men, of their fatal draw to one another. She thinks of Jeffrey. He's so young. Samantha's evil might be her birthright, not her fault, but that doesn't mean Jeffrey needs to be dragged down with her. 

She thinks these things, and while she is thinking them, exhaustion drags her down into a light, fitful sleep. 

 

MALICE IN DISGUISE 

"Cass?" 

Cassandra flinches. Awake at once. Remembering. She turns, and looks at the figure in the bedroom doorway. She doesn't speak. She can't. 

"Cass? You're usually up by now. Are you okay?" 

She casts an appraising look at Samantha. Looks at her glossy chestnut hair. Her sparkling eyes. How could she have been so blind? How could she have been duped into pitying such a vibrant young girl? How, after a lifetime of disappointments - paralysed, confined - how could she have ever thought this girl was a fellow traveller in pain? 

She no longer sees the girl she raised. The girl she loved. She sees a stranger, standing there in the doorway. A manipulative Lolita who came into their home. Seduced her son. She doesn't believe that Samantha cares about her welfare at all. She just hoped for another stolen tryst with Jeffrey before Cassandra woke up. 

She forces herself to speak. "I just overslept. I'm fine." 

A relieved smile spreads over Samantha's face, but Cassandra no longer trusts it. "Oh, that's all right, then," she says. "Do you want help getting dressed?" 

The idea makes Cassandra shudder. As if she would ever, ever let that little slut touch her again. 

"No," she says coldly. "I think it's time I started doing that for myself." Samantha looks taken aback. Cassandra grits her teeth and goes on more gently, "After all, it's hardly fair on you and Jeffrey." 

"Oh, we don't mind," Samantha says, and to Cassandra, that 'we' seems vaguely sinister. "But it's good that you want to be more independent." 

Just like her father, Cassandra thinks. She always makes everything sound so reasonable. 

"You go on out, Samantha," she says. "I'll be there shortly." She smiles at the girl. 

Smiles til she feels like her face will break in two. 

 

PRELUDE TO THE RECKONING 

Shameless. 

Just shameless, she thinks, watching them wash up the breakfast dishes. Standing close together, whispering together. Samantha's girlish laugh annoys her. She can't think how she ever thought it charming. 

She sees the brightness in Jeffrey's eyes when he looks at her. The coquettish way Samantha smiles back. Just screw on the fucking floor in front of me and be done with it, she feels like screaming at them. 

She can't bear it. 

She swivels her chair and wheels herself away, leaving her breakfast untouched. 

 

THE RECKONING 

Get rid of Samantha. 

Get rid of Samantha. 

The words run through her mind like a mantra. She wonders how she can do it. How she can make the girl go without it being her fault. 

Jeffrey, poor boy, would never understand. But infatuation passes. Once she's gone, he'll see her for the little whore she is soon enough. He'll thank her, one day, when he's married to some nice girl and they have beautiful untainted children. Samantha will be a prostitute somewhere, with needle tracks in her arm. And it will all be her own fault. Cassandra thinks that will be fitting. 

She will not let Jeffrey turn out like his father. 

Charles. Can he be enlisted to help? Cassandra can't tell him, of course - there is always the chance that he will side with his daughter, if she drags it all out into the open. And what if Samantha says that Jeffrey was the aggressor? The boy could get into a lot of trouble. 

But perhaps there are other ways. 

She knows the phone is tapped. She is not prone to paranoia, whatever Jeffrey might think, but she knows a double-click when she hears one. And who else does she know that's high enough in the State Department to order it? Cassandra has known for a long time, and she doesn't particularly mind. After all, she knows such dangerous things about the aliens. Of course they want to be sure she doesn't tell some reporter about it. Not that she would. Cassandra loves her country very much. 

But she has used that direct line to Charles to her advantage before. When the house was burgled three years ago, she knew it was the Edison twins, but she couldn't prove it. She made a point of saying so to Mrs Henderson over the phone, although she could have done it over the back fence just as easily. A few days later, the Edison's house was raided. The twins only got probation, but they never came near her house again. 

She thinks now that she could do something like that again. If Charles finds out about Jeffrey and Samantha through the phone tap, he can never make an issue of it, because he can never tell them that he has them under surveillance. 

All he can do is discreetly remove Samantha from their home. 

And that would suit Cassandra just fine. 

 

THE FALL 

"This is anonymous, isn't it?" 

The voice that comes down the line is smooth and reassuring. "Absolutely. The Helpline is funded by a private benevolent society grant. We only ask for your first name, and we destroy our notes at the end of our shift. It's totally confidential." 

"Oh, good," she says in reply. "Good." 

The counsellor - Laura, her name is - she says gently, "What's wrong, Cassandra?" 

Unexpectedly, Cassandra breaks into genuine tears. The counsellor makes sympathetic noises into the phone. Cassandra indulges herself for a few moments - God knows, she needs to let off some tension - but then she gets herself together. She has a job to do, damn it. Time enough for tears later. 

"It's my son," she sniffles. "And my stepdaughter. They're both teenagers. Eighteen and nineteen." She clears her throat. "They're-" 

"They're what?" Laura prompts. 

She hadn't realised how hard it would be to say it. 

"Sleeping together," she manages at last. "They're having sex. With each other." The enormity of it threatens to overwhelm her, but she bites her lip and makes herself stay strong. 

There is a pause, but only a fleeting one. She supposes a telephone counsellor must have heard worse. Tales of abuse, perhaps. How horrible. 

"How did you find out?" Laura asks her. 

"I saw them. Late at night. Outside." 

The counsellor's next words are unexpected. "What exactly did you see?" 

Cassandra frowns. A little affronted. "I don't understand what-" 

"Please." 

Well, whatever. It would be good to get it out. "He put his arms around her and kissed her. He put his hands under her clothes. He was...touching her. Intimately." 

"Did she kiss him back?" 

"Oh, yes," she says bitterly. 

"Then she consented." 

At once, the questions make sense. "Yes!" she says indignantly. "He would never-" 

"All right," Laura soothes. "All right, Cassandra, I just had to check on that." 

Cassandra is very careful after that. She had failed to take account of the counsellor's agenda, but she won't make that mistake again. Laura asks annoying questions about their family, their home, the children's relationship. Cassandra resists the urge to blame it all on Samantha. Charles wouldn't like that. At last, Laura gets around to what Cassandra really wants to talk about. 

"What do you want to do?" 

This is the opening she's been waiting for. "Well, the thing is, I think separating them is the answer. I really don't want to make an issue of this. I really think it could do more harm than good. After all, it's not like he's hurting her. But it can't continue." Cassandra sighs dramatically. "I'm thinking of sending her away to college somewhere. I can't really afford it, though. Her father could, but I couldn't ask him. Not without telling him why." She sighs again. "It's all such a terrible mess." 

Laura drones on. Yes, separating them would be a good solution. They're young and they sound otherwise well-adjusted and stable. Chances are they'll both come through it with no harm done. Cassandra could give a damn what becomes of Samantha, but she grits her teeth and makes non-committal noises into the phone. She ends the call as fast as she decently can, and she smiles when she hears the double-click on the line. 

Samantha goes missing that night. 

 

HIDING FROM THE LIGHT 

Cassandra doesn't like to watch any more. 

She is prepared for a little melancholy on Jeffrey's part. She is not prepared for his grief. 

She watches his weight drop, day by day. His eyes go dull and dark. His footsteps grow slow and forced. She sees him weep late at night on the verandah, where Samantha used to wait for him. Often, she turns away from the window when he comes home, because his heartbreak is more than she can bear. 

She finds, against her will, that she misses Samantha. Misses her laugh and the sound of her voice. Misses smoking with her on the verandah. She sits there a lot - on the stoop, not in her chair, even though getting in and out of it is a lot more trouble than it's worth - and she remembers the way Samantha would paint her toenails the way she liked them. 

She wonders, reluctantly, what became of Samantha. She assumed at first that it was just another alien abduction - a conveniently-timed one, admittedly. She expected to receive a letter from Charles, offering to put Samantha through school. When Samantha returned, she would accept his kind offer, pack her off to New York or somewhere equally far from April AFB, and that would be the end of it, at least for a few years. And in the meantime she would make sure Jeffrey settled down with some nice girl here. 

But none of that had happened. Samantha never returned. It's been five months, and the longest Cassandra herself ever went missing was four. 

It occurs to Cassandra that no matter where she is taken, she is always returned to her home. She supposes that makes sense. It wouldn't do for her to be found disorientated. She might talk about what she knows. Other abductees know little, but she knows a lot. Even Dr Werber has no idea how much she really knows. Cassandra will never tell, for she loves her country very much. 

Samantha knows very little, but she is always returned home as well. For that, Cassandra has no explanation, but she suspects the aliens take a little more care with the government families than with other abductees. Charles is small fry in the scheme of things, but she knows he kicked up a terrible stink the time Samantha was returned to a hospital when she was fourteen. He told her all about it. It was just as well the nurse watching her was drunk, or they would have had to fight the authorities for her. Cassandra thinks now that there may have been repercussions in the State Department for that little episode. 

But what if the aliens know that Samantha no longer has a home here? What if Charles isn't the only one who knows what she says on the phone? Cassandra has only a vague idea of how the internal structures of the State Department work, but she knows the aliens can do whatever they please. After all, they have the keys to human survival, and they're sharing what they know. Not even a bureaucrat could argue with that. 

But then, what will they do with her, if they aren't going to send her home? Test her indefinitely? The thought sends a chill through her. She acknowledges the need for the tests, even when they hurt, but the idea of anyone being in them indefinitely - 

It isn't her problem, she thinks. Samantha will probably be abandoned on a roadside somewhere, just like any other abductee, and she knows enough to look for a MUFON group. They'll look after her. She'll be fine. 

She'll be just fine. 

 

THE AWAKENING 

"I want to call the police." 

It is a tired refrain, and Cassandra's response is tireder still. "Samantha goes away all the time, Jeffrey. She'll come home when she's ready." She bypasses the whole debate about whether Samantha 'goes away' or 'is abducted'. She really isn't up to it tonight. And she doesn't like to antagonise Jeffrey any more than she needs to right now. His torment seems to be growing with every passing day. 

"But what if you're wrong?" he insists. "What if it isn't just Samantha going away like she always does?" 

She looks at him, frowning. This is a new addendum to an old argument. "What do you mean?" she wonders, curious in spite of her exhaustion. 

His expression is haunted. "What if she got pregnant or something?" he demands. There's tension in the lines of his jaw. "What if she got scared and - and ran away to have it?" 

The blood drains from her face. She knows what they do to pregnant women in the tests. She asks, deathly quiet, "Was she pregnant, Jeffrey?" 

"No!" he says hotly. Then, seeing her worried look, he calms himself. He says with a control that is visibly forced, "I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying. What if one of these times it's not what you think it is? And we didn't look?" 

She begins to tremble. 

What if she *is* wrong? What if Samantha heard her on the phone, and ran away? Or what if Jeffrey's right, and she was pregnant? Terrible images rise in her mind. An illegal abortion. Samantha bleeding to death in an alleyway. "You didn't look, Cass. You wanted me gone, and you didn't look." 

She lifts one shaking hand to her mouth. 

Oh, my God. What have I done? 

"What?" 

Jeffrey is frowning at her. She wasn't aware of speaking the words aloud. She finds her voice. "I said - I said we can't go to the police, Jeffrey. We just can't." 

He slams his fist down on the table. She flinches. "Why not?" he bursts out. "Why won't you?" 

She feels trapped. Jeffrey is pushing her to thoughts only half-articulated in her mind, and they scare the hell out of her. She says urgently, "Jeffrey, who falls under suspicion when a pretty girl goes missing?" 

He stares at her. "The boyfriend," he says. "But Samantha didn't have a-" 

He stops. He goes pale. He stares at her. Understanding the danger. Wondering what she knows. 

"No, she didn't have a boyfriend," she says deliberately. "But the people closest to her. You and me, for instance. Innocent things can seem not so innocent when the police are involved." 

"What sorts of things?" 

"Anything," she says. "Anything secret." 

"You think she had secrets?" He sounds nervous - so nervous that she thinks she would recognise it even if she didn't know he had anything to be nervous about. 

"From me?" she says with studied carelessness. "Of course she did. Show me a teenager who doesn't." 

"I don't have secrets," he says without a blush. 

She arches her eyebrows, but bites back the retort that springs to her lips. "Jeffrey," she says harshly, "I want you to promise me you won't go to the police." 

"I promise," he says readily. His eyelids flicker. 

Cassandra doesn't believe him. 

 

THE PRICE OF KNOWLEDGE 

She wonders what evidence Samantha left behind. 

Diaries. Letters. Trace evidence on the sheets, maybe. She's avoided Samantha's room since she went missing, but she realises now that she has to go in there. Just in case Jeffrey goes and does something stupid behind her back. 

She begins with the sheets, and she is heartily thankful that they're clean. She washes them anyway, in hot soapy water. There are tests now. They're starting to use them in criminal cases. 

She searches Samantha's desk after that. No letters, thank God, but she makes one discovery that makes her blood run cold. A piece of notepaper, and Jeffrey's handwriting: "California penal code S.285. State prison. Doesn't say how long. Still illegal even w/consent/age." Cassandra crumples it tightly in her hand. She will burn it and turn the ashes down the sink. 

She finds Samantha's diary minutes later. 

Her heart sinks when she sees it. She doesn't want to read it. But too much is at stake for her to indulge her sensibilities now. 

When she picks it up, it opens in a strange way in her hands. After a moment, she sees why. There are pages ripped out - a good number of them. 

Cassandra stares at the tattered remains of the spine, wondering whether Jeffrey did it in a bid to get rid of the evidence against him. She wonders whether that means he does intend to go to the police behind her back after all. Why didn't the stupid boy take the whole book, she wonders? Doesn't he know that this will only make it look worse? 

But the entry where the ripped pages stop is enlightening. 

"I've torn out some of my entries. I hate to do it. They mean so much to me. But we went to the library and we looked up the books, and it seems we could go to prison. I kind of knew it was against the law - but still, prison? For loving each other?" 

The remaining entries are superficial. 

She thanks God for that entry. It won't incriminate Jeffrey if he isn't already suspected, but it could save his life if he is. Clearly, Samantha destroyed the evidence herself. If, God forbid, Samantha's body were found and Jeffrey were identified as a suspect, at least this would indicate that she had been a willing partner. 

She decides to keep the diary. 

She scans the rest of it. There is one intimate entry - half of one, that is. The first half is gone. It doesn't mention any names, so clearly Samantha felt it was safe to keep it. It is explicit - more explicit than she wants it to be, at least - but Cassandra forces herself to read it anyway. Fragments leap out at her. They are heartbreaking in their childish simplicity. 

"When he touched me, everything I'd ever been afraid of just seemed to disappear. I wasn't even scared of the pain any more. He was scared of hurting me, but I wasn't. I knew he wouldn't hurt me. I just knew." 

Cassandra feels tears rising in her throat, and she doesn't know why. 

"I thought I would feel different when I wasn't a virgin any more. More grown up, or something. But I don't. I realise now how little I know and understand. I still feel like a kid, and I feel stupid for thinking I was anything else. But then I look at him and I see that it doesn't matter that we're still fumbling and finding our way, because we have each other, and that's enough." 

Racking sobs arise in her from nowhere. The diary slips from her hands. 

It's like ripping away a curtain. Like breaking up through water into the air. The final vestiges of the fever-panic of the last six months fall away, and Cassandra understands the terrible destruction she has wrought. 

There was no Lolita. There was only the girl she raised - the frightened child who grew into a frightened woman before her eyes, and who fell in love with the only friend she ever had. 

And Cassandra had cast her away. 

Cassandra weeps, hard and harsh until her throat and her eyes are raw. "I had it all wrong," she rasps out to the empty room. "Dear God, I had it all wrong." 

She prays. Prays for forgiveness. For Samantha's return. She'll do anything, she swears. Anything. She'll let them be together. Anything. 

Please, God, just bring her home. 

 

RESTITUTION 

She knows what she has to do. 

"Parents Helpline, this is Laura." 

She drove her daughter away. She didn't mean to. And now she wishes she could have her home. Laura drones on about survivor guilt and making peace and moving on. Cassandra doesn't listen. 

She listens for the double-click at the end of the call. 

 

END

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

_2012 addendum: I know consenting incest isn't necessarily a huge deal in fanfic circles these days, but it was rare in XF and rarer in fandom than it is today. This accounts for the rather soul-searching notes that follow._

CONCESSIONS MADE:

Thanks for reading this one. I know the subject matter explored here will push a lot of people's buttons, so thanks for taking a chance on me and coming along for the ride. 

This fic draws on a lot of sources. Originally, the idea came from a discussion on Whyincision. I was throwing out fic ideas that I'd like to see explored, and when I considered Jeffrey and Samantha and their life with Cassandra, the idea of an incestuous relationship occurred to me. I'm an only child, but I do think that there's a certain kind of sibling incest that occurs in a crisis situation, which would not occur outside that situation. A mutual, non-abusive relationship born of isolation and need. In a way, I guess it's analogous to the same-sex relationships among ordinarily heterosexual men in prisons and in war. I imagined this kind of crisis situation for Jeffrey and Samantha in the conditions in which they were raised, and this exploration was an outgrowth of that. I wanted to see that compassionately explored, and I think - I hope - I achieved that. 

There are a lot of themes here culled from other sources. The early sequences, where Samantha reorientates herself after her abduction, is inspired in part by "Acaulescent" by Miss Elise, a beautiful exploration of Marita's recovery from the tests. In an oblique way, it's also inspired by E. Watson's wonderful "Memories Of Mom", an exploration of Jeffrey's upbringing with Cassandra. It also draws a little on bittersweet "Nicotine Bliss And The Road Not Travelled" by Kelly Keil. And, of course, it pulls in a lot of themes from my own other works - themes about survival, the mythology as war, compromise, and so on. 

It was important to me to make clear that this is a love relationship, but also to be tasteful and restrained, precisely because it is such a sensitive subject. I don't know how well I achieved that with Jeffrey and Samantha's love scenes, but that was what I was aiming for, for what it's worth. 

In case you're wondering how this ties in with the mythology, I think it can co-exist with it. I don't see this as contradicting Closure at all. If I may expound my theory here, I have always considered Closure to be a mix of fact and psychological fiction. In other words, I believe Samantha lived with Cassandra and Jeffrey. I believe she ran away and that she wound up in that locked hospital room. However, I believe she was simply retrieved from that room in some way and that her life continued as it had done previously. I believe Mulder embraced the starlight theory in order to reach his own personal closure - his own acceptance that she was indeed lost to him. So I don't think this story contradicts that at all. Nor do I believe that Jeffrey knew that Samantha was Samantha Mulder when they were together - after all, he didn't know who his father was, or who the Mulders were. Samantha herself didn't seem to have a clear memory of her old life from her journals. All either of them knew was that they were half-brother and half-sister. There's room to theorise they might not have even known that much, though obviously that's not the assumption I've worked on here. 

Anyway - thank you, Gentle Reader, for indulging my ramblings, and for coming on this bittersweet little journey with me. Thanks for trusting me with a less-than-easy read. -- Deslea

CONCESSIONS BROKEN:

Thank you for continuing the journey with me. I have thoughts on continuing this, but I may leave it here. I'm not entirely sure. It will come down to whether I feel that continuing it will shed any more light on who Jeffrey and Samantha were together, or on who he is alone as he comes to grips with her loss. I think I've planted the seeds already for who he was in Patient X, so I probably don't need to spell it out. But we'll see. 

I have to say, Jeffrey and Samantha have taken me by surprise with how completely they've captured my imagination since I wrote Concessions Made. What began as an interesting idea has turned into something very close to my heart. A lot of the feedback I've gotten has said much the same thing - that it was a story that stayed with readers, as it has stayed with me. I hope I've done it justice with this follow-up.

I'm not sure why it was such a powerful story. I'd be more than happy to take all the credit *grin*, but I think the heart of it is the concept itself. I think there's something very special, and very heartbreaking about the ways in which people find love and hope in the depths of pain. I don't really want to glorify incest, because no matter how great the love between a closely related couple, the social obstacles are enormous. I've read some heartbreaking stories in the course of my research; stories of great pain and loss (as well as the equally heartbreaking stories of abuse). But I do want to honour any love that seeks to be truthful and sincere, and I think that's what Jeffrey and Samantha have here. 

Anyway...thanks once again for joining me on a sometimes painful read. Several people said to me that they read the first story solely because I wrote it and they trusted me to handle it well, and I can't tell you what that means to me. It's been a very draining, very moving journey. Writing this particular ending saddens me, because I would dearly love to have had more time with the two of them. But I hope the ride was worth it. It was for me. -- Deslea 

Factoid Notes for Concessions Broken:

1\. As far as I can tell, there is no such town as Charlotte, Alabama (there is, however, a Charlotte Creek). I visualised this as a small agricultural community in the south-west of the state, somewhere in the vicinity of Monroeville and Franklin. I apologise to any locals if this doesn't fit the demographics of that region - I researched as well as I could, and I got a feel for the state as a whole, but I had a lot of trouble finding detailed information about smaller regions within it. 

2\. In Alabama, incest is a Class C felony, regardless of age or the presence or absence of consent (although I imagine that additional charges of sexual assault, etc would apply in cases where consent was absent). Jeffrey and Samantha would face a minimum of one year and one day's prison, and a maximum of ten years. This is true regardless of whether their relationship is considered to be by blood or by adoption, although it is open to question just how formal Cassandra's adoption of Samantha really was. 

I have deliberately left unclear whether their marriage was formal or common-law, but common-law marriage is recognised in Alabama, so the end result is probably the same. The act of marriage between a closely related couple is itself an act of incest there, regardless of consummation - hence Jeffrey's concern about Barnable's files. It is worth noting that incest cannot be proven in Alabama by the uncorroborated testimony of those accused or their partners, so the state would have to rely on witness testimony, documents, or the birth of a child to make its case. 

Speaking more broadly (and this makes not one bit of difference to the fic, but it was an interesting set of factoids that turned up in my research), in my own country, from what I can tell, incest of this sort (while technically illegal) is probably protected from prosecution by sexual privacy laws, which forbid the State to inquire into the sexual activities of consenting adults. There are moves in several parts of the world to remove criminal provisions pertaining to incest between consenting adult partners, but these have not had widespread community support. The Wood Royal Commission in Australia originally wanted to decriminalise incest between consenting adults, but backed down after poor community response. In the final report, the commission recommended seven years' prison but also recommended this be limited to blood relatives - not relatives by adoption or marriage. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association's position paper on the 1981 Sexual Offences Act recommends that sex between consenting adults who are both aware of their blood relationship be removed from the legal definition of incest. Interestingly, the BC paper dwells at some length on the issue of couples where one person knows of a blood relationship and the other does not. That makes me wonder whether there was a major case in which this was an issue. Anyway...that's a tangent for another time. 

3\. I have imposed one of my own social standards onto the fic - namely, Barnable's compassionate part-waiver of his fees. This sort of waiver, while not exactly the norm, is not uncommon in Australia. I have no idea whether it happens in the US. 

4\. Another regional standard: I have based Jeffrey's thoughts and speculations on what was happening on the news in my country in 1987, when I was thirteen. It's possible that AIDS and Rohypnol became prominent in the US press a little earlier. It's also possible that the Yuppie Flu moniker for ME/CFS was an Australian one. If I screwed those up - sorry about that. I did my best. 

5\. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) does have periods of relapse and remission, as I learned when I contracted it myself eight years ago. At its worst, I was about as disabled as Samantha is here. I was lucky enough to go into a full remission when I became pregnant with my son. I didn't use the ME/CFS label here because in the late eighties there was a common belief that CFS was an outgrowth of the Epstein-Barr Virus. The ME/CFS designation came later. 

6\. I've learned in the course of my research that the terminology of incest is itself a huge political football. Several rape crisis agencies state outright on their web presence that there is no such thing as consenting incest - that incest as a term automatically implies the presence of an exploitative perpetrator and a coerced or manipulated victim. It appears that their main concern is that of validating the experiences of survivors who have been manipulated or otherwise maneouvered into a sort of "consent" which is not the free and adult consent we normally mean when we speak of consensual intercourse. (I have to say, my research suggests this is a valid concern - I found several couples who claimed to be in a mutual and consenting relationship, but whose accounts revealed that one partner actively pursued the other in a manipulative way). The law, by contrast, uses the word "incest" purely to refer to sex and/or marriage between close relatives (the degree of relationship prohibited varies by jurisdiction - many parts of the US consider cousin couples to be incestuous, but this is not the case in most other parts of the world). Lack of consent and minor age are aggravating factors rather than automatically implied. 

It is in this latter sense that I use the term in this story and the accompanying notes. As much as I sympathise with the reasoning used by the rape crisis agencies, I think the outcome is flawed. I think an adequate understanding of the term "consent" itself provides the philosophical distinction those agencies seek, and I think that equating "incest" with "exploitation" is unhelpful in making sense of this incredibly complex topic. That said, I do recognise that incest between consenting adult partners is by far the rarest form of incest within an immediate family. There is a huge difference between that and sexual abuse. If you are a survivor of abusive incest and are in need of support, please contact RAINN http://www.rainn.org or your local rape crisis center. 

7\. On the flip side of the equation, I found very few support avenues for consenting adult couples who are in a mutual relationship and are also closely related. About the best one I found was http://www.cousincouples.com. It's a good starting point if you're in that situation, although obviously, it is geared to cousins rather than siblings. I would strongly recommend avoiding alt.support.incest, which is populated by a disquieting mix of erotic stories and troubling stories of sexual predation. I don't think it's a helpful environment, regardless of whether your experience was/is abusive or mutual.

THE RECKONING:

This is a strange one. It all started with someone's feedback (Christy, I think) to Concessions Made. (Yes, I know, I still haven't replied to people for that one. I love you all so much, and I want to reply. I'm just not very good at making psychic space, you know? I think I've never really gotten very good at accepting kind words. Terrible failing. I'm sorry.) 

Anyway. Christy, or whoever, said that she could accept Cassandra's decision to allow the affair to continue, but she didn't completely understand why she did it. Samantha herself didn't understand why, and it was her POV, so it didn't really matter for the purposes of that story. But the comment nagged at me, and it occurred to me that I probably hadn't done Cassandra's POV justice. Because of the limits of Samantha's and Jeffrey's POV in Concessions Made and Concessions Broken, we saw Cassandra on a very quick trip through shock and acceptance, and ultimately a rather surprising level of acceptance of an enduring incestuous relationship between her children five years on. But we never saw the inner struggle that led her to that point. 

So that was how it began. I visualised a situation where Cassandra knew earlier, and was deeply unhappy about the situation, but said nothing. Then Samantha was abducted, and her grief for Samantha during her unusually long absence led Cassandra to make a kind of bargain with God. She would let the relationship continue, she would let Samantha be happy, if only Samantha would come home. She was shocked to find herself confronted with having to live up to that promise - by that point, like Jeffrey, she had all but accepted that Samantha was dead - but she was prepared, with some misgivings, to do so. That all fitted in with the magical thinking displayed by Patient X-Cassandra, all a-twitter about alien benevolence towards humanity. 

But when I began to write, I was taken completely by surprise. A heap of anger came out of Cassandra, seemingly from nowhere. I hadn't planned it. It just seemed to flow (and, I might add, rather more venomously than we see in the final cut). I roughed it out, then did some research before I came back to clean it up, and it turned out that her anger was consistent with real life experiences. Apparently when bystanders find out about an incestuous relationship, even when there is no victim (as with Jeffrey and Samantha), bystanders often turn one or other partner into a victim in their own minds in order to make sense of it. Well, colour me surprised. Guess I got deeper into the characters and situation than even I had suspected. I'm glad it turned out that way, though. This is the dark side of incest and its impact on a family, and that deserves a voice as well, despite my love and sympathy for Jeffrey and Samantha. 

So that's how muddle-headed, well-meaning Cassandra turned calculating and malicious (however briefly). And when I considered Two Fathers/One Son Cassandra, with her pragmatism and surprising steel, it seemed that this could work after all. I'll admit to some misgivings about the characterisation just the same. But it seems to me that "Cassandra Spender" and "Cassandra Spender, who just found out her kids are sleeping together" might be very different species. So I kind of gave myself the benefit of the doubt and went with it. 

The scene headings are allusions to the story of the Fall. The watershed moment where Cassandra understands what she has done, and particularly her shame in the face of Samantha's humanity is consciously mirrored on a Catholic theology of Purgatory - the intermingled love, shame, and redemption of seeing ourselves in all our weakness and frailty in the face of the ultimate goodness of God. In a looser way, I modelled Cassandra's whole spiritual journey (from light to darkness to light) on those sorts of archetypal ideas. I didn't intend it to be a religiously-laden piece (and I don't think it reads as one), but just the same, I can see the seeds of a Pauline/Thomistic theory of human development lurking there in the background. Who says a background in theology doesn't have any application to real life? *g* 

So that's how it all happened. I have my doubts about posting it simply because I fear its darkness detracts from the beauty of the Concessions universe. But it is, at least, honest. I am working on a long prelude to these stories - Jeffrey and Samantha's take on the early years (and I promise, it's a gentler read than this one). No idea when it will be finished. My Krycek/Marita readers will lynch me if I don't turn out another Enigma chapter soon. But it'll happen. Meantime, thank you all for your love and support along the way, and I'm sorry I'm sometimes an uncommunicative dolt, but it means the world to me. Thanks as always to Kristen, Rachel, and my LJ buddies for being sounding boards along the way, and Fiona J, this is for you. Rest in peace, my dear friend.

Factoid Notes for The Reckoning:

1\. Section 285 of the California Penal Code does indeed pertain to incest at the time of writing. The reference could well have been different in 1982, but I wasn't able to find the text for the laws current at that time. I chose California on the assumption that they still lived on April Base, CA, as in Closure, and that they didn't go to Alabama until Cassandra's decision that they should "start fresh" in Concessions Made. 

2\. Did Cassandra's actions make one bit of difference? I think they did. In this universe, although Cassandra is quite wrong about many things (not least of them being the part Charles (CGB Spender) has in the big scheme of things - and can't you just see her dismissing her slightly pathetic ex-husband as small fry?) I think she is quite correct in that he cares for her well-being and Jeffrey's, and that he does what he can for her within the limitations of the Project. I think that ultimately he cared more for her than for Teena, albeit with far less passion. But whether or not she really had any control over any of it is pretty much irrelevant. Just the possibility that she might have was enough, within her muddled mindset. 

3\. Where was Samantha during those six months? That, dear reader, is a question you'll have to answer for yourself.


End file.
